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So I've been spending part of this delay checking my rights under EC261. If the flight arrives three hours late or more, I'm entitled to EUR250. Currently it's due to arrive 1 hour and 40 minutes late. Air France has emailed to say that the reason for the delay is "operational reasons", so that...

AF1268 CDG-MAN Economy Cost: 24,000 Flying Blue points plus US$48.60 Of all my flights, booking this flight was the most difficult. Having booked my flights into Paris, I quite reasonably thought that getting to Manchester from there would be a breeze. It was not! I first looked for reward...

Chapter 3: The Nature of MAN. Time for me to leave Paris. I caught a taxi to Terminal 2E. CDG isn’t my favourite airport (I don’t think it’s anyone’s favourite airport!) and as expected things weren’t totally clear about where I should go once I arrived, but I was pointed in the right direction...

Sometimes you just need days like that. I obviously did -- after lunch I crashed in bed and slept deeply for almost two hours. I obviously needed a rest!

A quick post on Parisian street art... These people gave me permission to photograph them plying their trade... If you've spent any time in Paris you've seen these. They're called "Space Invaders" and they're illegal, but beloved, pieces of street art from a mysterious artist known only as...

Today is my last day in Paris, and I decided to take it easy. Yes, that’s right: I’m not visiting any museum today. Maybe the fact that I am able to choose to not visit museums makes me more a “museum aficionado” rather than a “museum junkie”? In any case, I have a late-night flight to...

Interesting… my nephew wore a mask during our visit, not for health reasons but because he didn’t want to be recognised. Maybe also I’ll have to reassess my “undergraduate” comment. I’ll be sure to ask him about the cat-olympics!

Thanks for that recommendation. I have one more day in Paris and time for one more museum! I was intending to go to the Invalides but I've just been wondering whether that might be one war museum too many after my unexpected detour to the "Liberation of Paris" museum earlier today. I'll sleep...

Across the road from the (official) entrance to the Catacombs is a museum that I didn’t know existed: “The Museum of the Liberation of Paris”. You might not have ever realised this, but I’m a bit of a museum junkie… So I bid farewell to my family (more accurately, they fled from me with...

I didn't, but I'm one of the least observant human beings in existence... Interesting ... I was intending to visit the Pompidou Centre on this visit but chose not to becuase it's in the middle of a major major renovation. I would assume that they'll finish the Pompidou before getting started on...

Well, maybe you're like me: points rich but money poor. Or maybe you're also like me and you couldn't find Business class flights out of the country, given the short timeframe, so you've redeemed your points for Economy flights for some of the way. Or maybe you have a family and the only way you...

We walked out to find ourselves in quite a nice part of Paris. We ventured down the Rue Daguerre. I assume that this street was named after the Louis Daguerre who pioneered camera photography in the early 1800s? If so, that’s pretty cool! Anyway, here are some scenes from Rue Daguerre...

We emerged, naturally, to find... ... the gift shop! In good taste? You be the judge! I resisted the temptation to make a purchase. I have to report that it was, in fact, one of the easier temptations to resist...

Now let’s see if I can manage to post some of the more “for mature audiences” photos as thumbnails. Mods, feel free to delete/edit if even that is too much.

The centrepiece of today was a visit to the Paris Catacombs, but it had a couple of unexpected (pleasant) twists. I won’t go into the history of the Catacombs in great detail (feel free to click on the hyperlink above or to look them up), but it was an amazing experience. Until a few months ago...

I have a Platinum Charge and a Platinum Edge. Upon receiving the Platinum Edge I called AmEx and asked for all my points to be consolidated and it was done immediately. All my spending on my Platinum Edge now earns Ascent Premium points which are consolidated into the one points account.

It's great that there's a small but dedicated community of Vigee Le Brun fans on AFF! A couple came out of the woodwork after my visit to the Met earlier this year too. Of course she is best known for her Marie Antoinette portraits. Yet I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that even...

I spent a more time after that wondering around the amazing galleries. I did want to find more works by Vigee Le Brun (have I ever mentioned that she’s my favourite artist?) and I was not disappointed. I’m always amazed by the humanity and the personality which she can cause her faces to...

The tour was nearing its end but there were a few more stops. First, Rembrandts. Lots of Rembrandts – a roomful of them, in fact. I’d visited a roomful of Rembrandts earlier this year at the Met in NYC and reflected on how blessed I am to have been able to visit the Met and the Louvre in the...

Tours at the Louvre are very cheap (this one cost about EUR 10, from memory) and well-organised. I’d been instructed to meet at the Group Reception area, where I swapped my drivers licence for a set of headphones and portable amp. I was then told to go upstairs and meet my guide in Room 8. The...